Sum of a Man
by Tiny Notepad
Summary: Investigating a Nakai research lab brings to light their less-savory scientific endeavors. The ethical quandary that follows alters Destiny's fate, shifts the dynamic of the crew, and threatens Rush's job security. Unfortunately for Rush, it's also Colonel Young's new chess buddy. (Now with corrected formatting.)


Author's Note: This story is an alternate universe set shortly after _Faith_, with the prologue specifying events that happened between _Justice_ and _Space_. It will eventually change to an M rating and have some body horror, dubious sexual consent, gore, swearing, and deal with some possibly troubling territory such as self-worth, identity, existentialism, and Nicholas Rush being a sad, sad creature. More terrible things might be added to that list in the future.

**Warnings** for this chapter includes mild body horror.

* * *

Rush would never know when they did it. Not exactly.

He could remember, if he tried (he tried not to), the jarring double-vision of what their neural interface tried to project. It was still early. Before they could adjust for his human brain. Before they fixed the strange dual reality, like living in a double-exposed photograph.

In one world, he was on _Destiny._ His team greeted him with smiles, which was entirely wrong. They were missing their lips, looking more like dogs baring their teeth. Their skulls were caved in. Eyeballs protruded. Volker's neck was as long as his spine, holding an extra rib cage and snapping under its own weight. Brody's hair was the sound of radio static, a disjointed, synesthesiac nightmare. Franklin was there. Rush could not see him, but Rush knew he was there.

In another world, Rush's eyes were wide and blown. Every muscle in his body burned to move him. He could see, through the projected haze of his doppelganger team, one of the aliens holding a long syringe. Rush desperately wanted to move. They kept him in a strange configuration, tilted back, halfway under horizontal in the container he was encased in. Like an egg in shape, larger than a bathtub and filled with a liquid thicker than resin, like molten glass pooling around him, but instead of scorching it was deceptively cool. It was the only real sensation over the numbness and false sensitivity of the projection.

"Did you finish the schematics?" Volker asked, seemingly undisturbed by the state of his own broken neck. In the tiny corner of Rush's brain he could keep for himself, to ensure his basic sanity, he felt grateful.

They were making progress. They were speaking, in English, in a normal vocal range and in words that made sense. The no longer sounded like the color orange or like the idea of cutting the grass or, worst of all, like violin music.

That small corner of his mind was further split as _Destiny_ dissolved and reconstructed itself. This time, Volker's neck was still long, but there was no second ribcage to be seen.

"Did you finish the schematics?" Volker asked, head managing to balance a fraction of a second longer before collapsing. Destiny began to dematerialize again.

A large part of the small part of his mind over which he had autonomy wanted to die. A sliver of him wanted them to just get it right, that no secrets were worth this, for it just to be over and to go back to the ship and it didn't matter if it wasn't real. He didn't care if anything was real.

Except for that foreign but clearly recognizable hypodermic needle one of the aliens held aloft, as if it wanted Rush to know what was coming next. It punctured the container's curious membrane and slowed as it hit the gel's resistance, but pushed forward smoothly. Rush could see it advancing, ducking his head in his Destiny-Reality to watch it through the smooth, flat plane of Brody's clipboard. It was easier to see a reality more clearly on flat, smooth surfaces in the other. Less visual interference. He resisted, tried to thrash, but his viscous prison held him tightly in place.

The needle was as thick as a straw, and even though there was no visible plunger, Rush got the impression they were taking something out rather that putting something in. He wasn't sure if that was better or worse.

It punctured his belly, punching through the skin.

It was agonizing. Rush screamed in the Destiny-Reality, and his team looked at him strangely for it. He screamed in the Alien-Reality, or at least tried to. The thick substance was in his mouth and nose and throat, clogging the sound and feeling like it should be more uncomfortable than it was. He was pretty sure they had disabled his drowning reflex. How he was breathing, however, was a mystery.

They took something and pulled out, gel closing in where the needle had been, flowing, cool and numbing. He didn't bleed a drop. It was all tamped down by the pressure around him, like his useless tear ducts. His tear glands were swollen with lacrimal fluid, puffing the skin into the corner of (one version of) his vision. Rush has no idea what it was, and couldn't move his arms to check.

Volker's neck was much shorter now, but his skull was still unnaturally cone-shaped, and Brody's hair, while being colored the gradient color of a sunset, was at least in the right sensory family. Franklin was still invisible.

"Did you finish the schematics?" Volker asked again, and again Rush's mind involuntarily relayed through the neural interface,_ This is still not right._ Volker began to break apart, ready to be reconstructed more accurately.

After a herculean effort, Rush managed to squeeze his eyes shut in the Alien-Reality, fighting against the preserving material that trapped him like a prehistoric mosquito in amber. He still lived in the two realities, could still feel the pressure and cool and the weight of his own body and the sensation of being matter. But having only one vision helped.

The focus it took to maintain two different realities was untenable. Rush had no sense of time nor capacity to keep up with _Destiny_ and her crew's countless reassemblies and its ever-impossible, ever-erroneous construction. But the stress never lifted. They kept pushing. And pushing. And Rush knew somewhere in the very back of his consciousness that he was waning, that he couldn't keep reconciling the inexplicably-shifting gravity or the wrong textures in the air or the dissociative effect of his eyes materializing at the opposite end of the room, staring at his own featureless face from a distance.

He was cracking.

Something horrifically painful crushed his sternum. Not on _Destiny_. The cold, numbing gel seeped in, seeped too deep inside him. Rush had to be - had to focus - on the Alien-Reality. He had to do something, but on_ Destiny_ the console screens emitted not light but a beam of energy that was quickly melting through the hull of the ship. They were prying open his chest. Snapping bones. He was going to be sucked into sp- but no, that wasn't real. Something cold and metal slid against the open gore of his chest. Rush knew it was just an illusion, but when the hull was breached and the vacuum of space sucked the air from the room in a single moment, Rush leaped to hold on to a terminal.

There was something-

They put something in him.

~x~

They found him.

Rush felt the quiver from within his tank. He startled to full consciousness, the first respite in a long chain of unbroken, mind-bending waking hours. For the first time, he was alone and reality was solid. He would have wept, but didn't have the energy or salt left in him to do so. Instead, he drifted in the thin water. Hooded his eyes and rested and relished being without the complications of being twice. He was mentally, emotionally, and physically exhausted.

There was no way to escape. He knew, so he didn't try.

When Scott and Greer found him, he couldn't even muster surprise. It took them nearly ten minutes and the advent of half the science team to figure out how to use the control panel and drain the tank. The feeling of gravity returning made Rush buckle his knees on the way down, laying in an inelegant heap on the wet tank bottom while they figured out the door. He made a token attempt to lift his head, but failed.

He closed his eyes.

It was cold. He could hear the muted conversation on the other side of the thick glass. With a hydraulic hiss, a door recessed on the tank's far end. Rush let them come to him. Unmoving. Shaking, partial from the cold. They surrounded him, lifted him gently, in a way Rush didn't think possible, to his feet. Park moved wet hair out of his eyes. Greer urged them to move through the halls of alien architecture. Hands locked around his arms and back.

Everything was a comfort. Everything was solid. And singular. He didn't have to think too hard to process what was happening. Scott's idiotic, crooked smile when checking in on his radio was a comfort. The cadence of Greer's voice. The sway of Park's short, bobbed hair. (Because Park's hair had always been short.) It was all a comfort. It was miraculous.

By the time they made it back to the docked _Destiny_, the adrenaline was dissipating. Rush crashed, and hard.

He wanted his mother. For the first time since he was four, and his da had explained that she was gone now, and not just to the hospital for a while, he wanted his mother. His throat closed tight, and he gasped to breathe, but he did not cry; his tear glands were still damaged. He wanted to be held. Or to hide. Or to wake up.

He managed a quiet, dry sob.

"You're going to be okay, Doc," Greer said from next to him. Distantly, Rush knew that was an entirely unfounded assumption, and that idea terrified him. An aftershock of panic made him struggle in the grip holding him up, but he hadn't eaten, making the thrashing more pathetic than it was dangerous.

"Should we sedate him?" someone, maybe Brody, asked behind him.

Rush tried to picture the Ancient-design hypo that would inject the alien venom they had collected. The image he generated instead was the long, thick alien needle, sinking down into his stomach.

"Naw," Scott decided, noticing how Rush fell limp and compliant. Not noticing the dilation in his wide eyes. "Doesn't look like he'll need it."

From that point until the jerking shudder of _Destiny's_ docking release, no one spoke to him directly. That was a blessing. When they were almost at the end of the alien ship, Greer, Scott, and the present science team passed Rush off to Lieutenant James and Corporal Barnes. While the larger team went back, presumably to make sure that everyone who had boarded was getting out, James and Barnes stole Rush away, leading him fast enough that his feet skidded across the ground uselessly.

He panted in exhaustion trying to keep up, occasionally finding his footing for a pace or two before a jolt of pain ran up through his legs. _Destiny_ had seemed so distant and unattainable while he was with the aliens that Rush could barely orient himself when he did come back onboard. They were moving fast. _Destiny_ shuddered, and a distant noise like a blast sounded out.

"Are we under attack?" Rush asked. The words came out automatically, without him considering what that could mean.

Barnes shifted Rush up higher onto her shoulder. "I think that was us undocking."

That, too, was hard to conceive. Rush stared unfocusing into space. What did this mean? This meant... this meant...

"They're gone?" Rush asked. It was quiet enough that no one heard. The only response he got was James this time being the one to bounce him up higher on her shoulder.

They were gone. It sounded simple. Rush still could not believe it.

They took him to TJ. After stripping him out of the clinging wetsuit and into the thoughtful wrap of two thermal blankets, he still shook. It was difficult to still pretend it was from the cold. Someone had retrieved his clothes from his room and left them waiting in the infirmary, still folded the way he had left them on the bed. Before Rush put on his shirts and vest, TJ carefully checked him over for injuries.

"Can you tell me your name?"

"Doctor Nicholas Rush," Rush responded, breathless. The syllables quaked.

"Good," TJ praised after just a moment of hesitation, and any other time Rush would have bristled at her softened tone. But the gentle quiet of her voice and the attentive lay of her hands over the sore muscles in his arms were grounding. "Can you tell me how you got these?"

Rush followed her gaze and saw for the first time the bruises along his arms. Black and purple blooming along his bones, pink, green, and yellow along the muscle. They were extensive. Ghastly. He tried to recall where they might have come from, but Rush found recollection beyond him. He bowed his head. "No."

She said nothing, but her face tightened. "Do you know where you are?"

"_Destiny_," Rush responded promptly, still talking to his lap. Then, to clarify, "The genuine _Destiny_."

"What does-? Wait, nevermind," TJ said instead, shaking her head. "We're going to give you some time before debriefing. Do you think you'll be okay with answering questions later tonight?"

"What time is it?" Rush asked. He already knew that the answer to her question was a resounding 'no', but somehow he didn't think putting it off would help.

"About 0800. I'd like to get a crisis counselor onboard as soon as one is cleared for the stones. We can go ahead without one if you feel up to it, but SGC ordered a full psych eval eventually."

"And I'm sure they can enforce that," Rush murmured. It was an automatic response. It felt nice. Natural. Normal. TJ seemed to appreciate it, giving him the first painless smile he had seen in what felt like years.

Satisfied that there were no other injuries (because he had never been cut open), she ordered him to lie down and rest. Rush obeyed, more because he was exhausted than any sense of submission. Exhausted.

He couldn't close his eyes. He couldn't think straight. He couldn't even think. Rush burned in frustration, but was too afraid to try and navigate through his mind. For now, at least. He could wait for the tangle to loosen. He didn't- He didn't need to think right now.

"How is he?" a quiet voice asked. It floated in from just outside the infirmary door, clearly trying not to disturb him. It sounded concerned. Sincerely concerned.

Rush swallowed bile. That was Young's voice.

"In my professional opinion?" TJ responded, sounding strained. "He's got bruising, some tenderness, and he's probably not eaten properly since they took him. I'd say water his rations down more and let him rest, but that's not what I'm concerned about."

"What, then what?" Young asked. Ever-demanding, but in this, with TJ, he sounded almost harmless. More like he realized for once he was out of his league.

TJ exhaled. "I'm not a psychologist."

"Your best guess, then," Young persisted. A mix of insistence and distress. Rush did not understand.

"I don't have one because_ I'm not a psychologist_. But you can see him yourself during debriefing."

"Is he awake?"

Rush's gut twisted so quickly it actually drew his legs up an inch. TJ sounded cross. "He shouldn't be if he is."

Rush's gaze drifted across the room, trying to distract himself from his would-be murderer skulking in the hallway, TJ being the only thing between them. His eyes rested on the Ancient hypodermic. He was-

_Alien needle._

Rush gave a strangled cry, suddenly unable to expand his ribs or lower his diaphragm. His arteries and veins leapt up in his neck, on his arms, coloring his bruises. He was going to die. There was something wrong with his heart and he was going to die. This was what death felt like. Dizzy. Cold.

Above him, TJ ineffectually tried to explain what a panic attack was.

He was dying.

"You're okay."

He was dying.

"You're going to be okay."

He was dying, and Rush had never in his life wanted to hit a woman, but if he had been capable of anything remotely resembling motor skills then _so help him-_

She reached for the hypo, and Rush's mind ground to a halt.

There was a hiss against his arm.

Rush woke hours later, feeling profoundly betrayed.

(He really hoped this wasn't going to become a pattern.)

"You sedated me," he rasped, aiming for accusatory and falling straight into pitiful with his hoarse throat. The memory alone made his stomach flip.

TJ looked up from the folder she was writing in, taking inventory. She had the decency to look guilty.

"You were going to hurt yourself," TJ rationalized for him, crossing the room to his bedside.

Rush wanted to repeat himself, to make her understand, but didn't. Instead, he turned his focus to the infirmary ceiling with a bitter glare. "How long was I under?"

TJ tilted her head to the side, approximating. "Only... thirteen hours? How do you feel?"

Rush hissed through his teeth, awkwardly stilting to his elbows in an attempt to sit up. TJ's hand on his shoulder pressed him gently but firmly back onto the cot, pulling the thermal blankets back up. It would have been embarrassing how easily she handled him, but Rush was preoccupied. "The debriefing," he murmured. "We should get on the stones."

"They rescheduled. How do you feel?" TJ pressed.

"Fine. Good." Rush clenched his teeth and huffed. "These sorts of things have protocols for a reason, Lieutenant."

TJ didn't seem too terribly troubled. She crossed the room again and returned with a bowl of banana mush. It was watered down enough that a shallow puddle of water sat on top with nothing left to thin. Rush shoveled a bit up and let it slide off his spoon with a unappetizing dribble, looking past it to TJ with obvious displeasure. "Usually we would give you a liquid diet, but this is really the best we can do," she explained at his reproachful look. "You looked like you lost some weight."

Rush pressed his palm against his chest. Not only could he pinch out the outline of his clavicle, the row of his ribs protruded from his stretched skin just below, starting too high on his chest. He flattened his hand, rubbing the bruise there through his white undershirt. He didn't feel hungry. That probably was not good.

Rush swallowed down half of the bowl while TJ ran through a general list of questions to evaluate his health when the memory of her conversation in the hall came up.

"What about Colonel Young?" Rush asked, mixing some of the excess water with the muck at the bottom of the bowl. He already felt uncomfortably full, but was pretty sure the lieutenant wouldn't accept that.

"What about him?"

"He was asking for me."

This actually got her attention. He wasn't sure what strange spectrum of emotion flashed across her face, but it settled on something close to what he saw when waking up from his withdrawal-induced embarrassment. "Is that why-"

"No, no, of course not," Rush dismissed with a wave of his hand. "He needed me for something, and I think I've slept as much as I'm going to."

"I told him he could stop by after the debriefing, if you were feeling up to it," she said, words slowed and obviously plucked with care.

Rush's mouth pulled into a suspicious not-smile. "That won't be necessary, Lieutenant. If you wouldn't mind letting him know I'm awake- better yet. I think my radio is still in my room. I'm sure the rest of the science team miss my barking of orders."

"Even if you were cleared for duty and I got you your radio, which isn't going to happen, that doesn't mean you have to see him right now," TJ said. She sounded urgent. Stern. Angry even, and Rush privately wondered when his personal health had become a topic of concern.

This time Rush did roll his eyes in frustration. "Now's as good a time as any."

"No," she began, the word chopped. She leaned closer, almost conspiratorially, and set her face into dead seriousness. A hard line in her voice clarified, "I mean, you don't have to see him again, ever."

She sounded protective.

And a number of things occurred to Rush. That the edge in Lieutenant Johansen's voice was not directed towards him, for one (for once). That she was not only discouraging civilian cooperation, but encouraging insubordination of her ranking officer. She was encouraging insubordination of _Young_. Encouraging _him_.

And that, in some meaning of the phrase, she was on his side.

Rush leaned back, exhaling sharply. He glanced around the room with his head bowed, fringe of loose hair hiding his face, and said quiet and even, "Get the colonel."

He didn't have to worry very long. Colonel Young appeared at the entrance to the infirmary sooner than expected. TJ followed up behind him, standing like a sentry so that Young was placed between them. It seemed so strategic. Rush shifted uncomfortably.

"Lieutenant, I wouldn't want to keep you from your duties if you have someplace you need to be," Rush tried, head tilted meaningfully towards the door. TJ got the hint and, while it was clear to Rush that she didn't like the sound of that, she respected his request.

If he were to be asked later, Doctor Rush would not be able to remember what words had been said when he was finally left alone with his would-be killer. He would only recall the meaning behind them. Perhaps it was because Colonel Young's submission and contrition were so bizarre that it was difficult for him to process at all. Certain things, however, stuck tight.

That the crew had figured out what had occurred on the desert planet.

That the science team had driven maintenance into the ground.

That everyone wanted him, needed him, and had turned on Young when things began to unravel.

That Young had been the one to marshall a team and organize his rescue.

That Young had sat beside him in the infirmary under the threat of incarceration (for attempted murder), promising respect and power and autonomy for Rush in exchange for Rush's forgiveness and endorsement. Or at least, for more favorable testimony at Young's court-martial.

That Young had begged him.

That he was safe.

Like lines of ill-fitting code written in his memory, the likes of which Eli had pointed out and damned him with. It was there. He could have seen it. Should have seen it. But he wanted it, and wanted it so much that he refused to look too closely at the clumsy insertion.

It was three weeks before he was back on shift. Before, he would occasionally act as lead scientist when in a real emergency, but after the surge of adrenaline and necessity, Rush would always retreat to his quarters, nursing his tentative grip on himself. The math helped. It was calming. Easy, most of the time, and when it wasn't, it was a welcome challenge. After three weeks, things began to... to patch. He had more good days than bad. The flashes at the corner of his eyes, ghosts of _Destiny's_ projected, impossible landscape, lessened in frequency and severity. He slept, sometimes for whole hours before nightmares would wake him.

Lead scientist. Perhaps not yet cleared for all of his old duties, but working together with Young, a split of responsibilities they both agreed were fair and realistic. The team gave him a wide berth, none of them quite as confident in Rush's stability as Young was. It didn't take long for Rush to prove his mettle. He quickly returned to his place as the most productive member of the science team.

He worked at his station, diligent and quiet.

"Doctor Rush, did you finish those schematics?" Volker asked, leaning back in his chair to address him across the room. Everyone called him Doctor Rush now. His team. The military. Even the civilians that passed him in the hall, smiling and greeting him with the most pleasant expressions.

"Yes, yes," Rush said, waving his hand.

"Could you send it to my station, please? I need to see the layout of the ship's nose."

Rush nodded, not looking up from his screen. "Of course."

Rush heard him murmur his thanks, followed by the quiet, curious noise of Volker reviewing the new information. The gentle litany that he muttered to himself, little rhetorical questions, interest, enthusiasm, whispers of awe, made the corner of Rush's mouth hook up in a hard-earned smile. He catalogued the ambiance as 'the sound of accruing knowledge'.

Rush's smile warmed and melted into genuine. Small, fragile and new. He had nearly everything he wanted.

Unfortunately, perfect happiness was impossible. And when you try to make the impossible happened, complications tend to arise.

It was almost six months after Rush's return when Eli asked him for help with the chair diagnostics. After stabilizing the myriad of issues that had cropped up since he had left, Rush and the science team turned their attention back to the chair. This time, he was met with no resistance from the military. When he had informed Colonel Young, the man had nodded at him with a kind of rational submission.

Of course, there was work to be done before attempting to use it. Naturally. He wasn't irresponsible. They spent weeks fine-tuning the software buffer, testing, re-testing, reviewing, re-reviewing. Hoarding information. Making it safe. Making it ready. And they were close. Every day a little closer.

Rush's presence in the chair room grew to be near constant. He slept, he ate, he went through the motions of the chores necessary to maintain the ship. And he'd make the long trip down _Destiny's_ halls back to the real work, real excitement and a real sense of purpose.

And when the door opened, Gloria Rush was sitting in the chair.

Her perfume was thick in the air, but not overpowering. The same intensity he breathed when he was next to her, kissing her throat as they closed their eyes for bed. Near. It flooded the room and grabbed him by the throat and tightened her grip. It hit him first, before he could understand what he was seeing.

And then her, lit by the bleaching floodlight above, casting dark shadows as intense as the brilliance of her skin. And she was radiant. Ethereal in how she moved, but there was another dimension to her that Rush had not been able to feel. A depth. Her hair was dark, like when they first met. Before the cancer and the chemo and the wigs and things getting complicated.

"Hello, Nicholas," she said, her words making the world shake, the lights flicker. His chest vibrated in resonance, as if it were coming from inside him.

"You're not real," Nicholas whispered, voice cracking.

She smiled sadly and nodded. "You were always a clever man."

She flickered, the sharp edge of her form fuzzing for a moment, a blink of translucence.

"No," Nicholas choked. "No, no, you don't have to-"

The walls shivered.

Nicholas took a step forward, extending his palm, but afraid to touch. Afraid it wouldn't be solid. "You don't have to do this. I can keep pretending." He wasn't talking to her.

Even to himself, his voice sounded weak. Gloria flickered again, and Nicholas touched her cheek with his fingertip.

She felt soft and solid, until she didn't, fading like the walls peeling away around them.

"I can pretend it never happened," he pleaded. His shoulders shook. Gloria softened, her hand on his arm, spectral. "Please. I can. I can. You don't have to-"

She was gone, his hand hovering in air. He keened, a smothered scream, curled his hand to his chest. The chair shuddered apart, drifting in pieces before no longer existing. The wall was shedding, shredded like wallpaper, revealing the void behind it.

The floor dropped out, and Rush was encased in the bowels of the alien ship.

~x~

They found him.

It was shorter this time. Rush's mind was callusing, adapting and toughening to this torture. He passed the point of shock and began, as agonizing as it was, to accept it. In this reality, it took him a week to recover enough to get back to work. When he triggered the reality's dissolution only a month later, the dread began to harden into bitter, grim hatred. The scent of her perfume breezed in the air. When he crashed back into the Alien-Reality, he was already halfway back to calm.

~x~

They found him.

He was suspicious. It took him only a day to get back to work, and the entire time he was poised for deconstruction. He was profoundly dissatisfied to find out that he was right, triggering deconstruction after five months. She was there for just a moment.

~x~

They found him.

He knew it wasn't real. That didn't help. He couldn't do anything. He was there for the meantime. Biding time. He might as well live during that time. Eight weeks to dematerialize.

~x~

They found him.

It was... It seemed reasonable to pretend. It wasn't a bad existence. People were nice.

~x~

They found him.

Nicer than they used to be.

~x~

They found him.

~x~

They found him.

~x~

They found him.

~x~

His eyes opened.

There was a pipe hitting the glass.


End file.
